“MUSIC HATH CHARMS.”
For the leading of the psalmody, the precentorship, there were several ready offerers. Of these, Andrew Taylor, the son of Mr. Taylor, the elder already spoken of, most frequently occupied the “desk,” as the precentor’s seat was called (sometimes, however, the “bunker”). On one occasion it was the “turn” of his worthy father to stand at the “plate” in the lobby where the “collection” was made, along with a deacon named William Morrison, who was by trade a joiner, and had been working for the greater part of the summer in a neighbouring county at a new mansion-house. Andrew Taylor had a good voice of considerable power and sweetness, and William Morrison did not know that he was to lead the singing that day. As soon as his clear, silvery tone caught the deacon’s ear, he turned quickly to Mr. Taylor, and said, “Wha’s that that’s precentin’?”
“It’s our Andrew,” said Mr. Taylor.
“Your Andrew, Mr. Taylor!” said William, extending his hand; and taking Mr. Taylor’s, he shook it warmly. “Your Andrew! Ah, Maister Taylor, Maister Taylor, it’s glorious a’thegither! It’s by-ordinar’ grand to see sae mony finding out that they’re like the thousand an’ seven hunder an’ threescore in the ninth o’ First Chronicles, ‘very able men for the work of the service of the house of God,’ that were clean idle before. Eh, Maister Taylor, Maister Taylor! I maun join in,—I cannot help mysel’.”
And these two men, standing at the plate in the lobby opposite the outer door, sent their voices into the street, for they knew the Psalms too well to need any book; and the appropriate words added strength to their lungs as they sang part of the 144th Psalm to the tune “New London”:
“That, as the plants, our sons may be,
In youth grown up that are;
Our daughters like to corner-stones,
Carved like a palace fair.”
I may here state that not the least observable matter in the new state of things was the additional meaning and force found in the Psalms of David. Possibly they are best adapted for a militant, progressive, almost agitated state of the Church. In our parish church, by the same people, they had been listlessly sung and seldom “entered into;” but in the new church, even in the reading of them by the minister, there was new light thrown on old psalms. Many in the congregation could be seen giving an appreciative nod, and if nearer them, you would have heard a very slight “hem,” which meant, “I didn’t observe that before.”